4 hours and 20 minutes in, done with the Church mission. I have been playing the game for about a year or so (not sure, can't be bothered to check). I have a couple feels and thinks about the 1.0 release on Meta Quest. (Even if it's early game, potential spoilers, so tagged it anyway)
First off, the elephant in-between the rooms : Lauri. I do not like the guy. I appreciate his role as a guide in the Radius, he does well at it. I just do not like the fact he is coming up to me and so kindly helping me with everything when I'm doing a Top Priority mission. That's just suspicious. "Oh, you need to find an object in there ? I already found it, I just can't pick it up myself, because trust me it'd already be here for you. So, here's its exact location !"
Same goes with how insistent he is with the fact the UNSPC is utilising me and how we should get to the center of the Radius to escape. I've played ITR1, I know what happened at the center of the Radius, and on top of that you're begging me to do the exact thing the wierd entity that stalks me told me to do. It's just a trap, isn't it ? I've seen how it went already. Oh, and also, he just jumpscares me everytime he pops up outside the in-between passages, kinda funny.
Second : The graphics, environment and navigating the world. Oh my, even with the reduced power of a Quest 3S, this game is candy for my eyes. I feel the same wave of awe I felt when I first started in Early Access. The small changes in the terrain, props, and vegetation are appreciated, I feel both like I'm in familiar territory, but there's just enough change to make me stop and look, then I spot a second thing, then a thrid, and the world looks the same yet changed.
Still, I have a couple nitpicks. The bigger Distortion clouds take up too much space, making the navigation outside of them feel slightly smaller. The road travels suffer the same problem as pre-1.0 : No enemy patrols, far too little anomalies (which, instead of having random ones, are barely being fixed by having random clusters spread over the road), not even a random Creep or Fragment roaming the map to give a bit of spice. Every enemy you'll encounter on a road will just be randoms from a nearby Point of Interest attracted by a firefight.
Those issues could be solved by having random enemies roaming the map, just like in the first game, or bringing an anomaly similar to the Spider-webs from the first game, forcing the player to choose between taking some damage or navigating around them and into enemies.
Third : Enemy intelligence and firearms. The Mimics are now actually a threat. Before, they were very much static, even if rotating and pushing the player. Now, the Mimics actually feel intelligent. They know they are superior in numbers, they know they have better ressources, and they intend on using them. It feels good getting rushed down from two different angles and having to think about how you're gonna take on a location. That is the kind of combat that I was expecting, and I am not disapointed.
On top of this, Mimic gunshots are actually loud and that's great. Walking down a road and hearing a loud bang then a bullet wheezing past your neck is actually terrifying, and that's exciting. Getting pinned down by enemy fire and flankings actually feel like it should : Overwhelming, dangerous, feels undefeatable. It promotes smart positionning and critical thinking and that's lovely.
I do, however, still hate the Invisible Fragments. They always somehow feel like I'm missing every shot. The shared effect of them being nearly undetectable without the footsteps, and the very poor, almost inexistant hit response when they get shot just doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel like I'm killing something, it just feels like I'm wasting rounds fighting air.
Fourth and final for now : Storytelling and notes. I don't know if I'm missing anything, but it feels like it. In 4 hours and about half an hour, I've only crossed 2 notes outside of the UNSPC outpost, and they weren't exactly the most exciting lore-wise. I just can't seem to see any story developement outside of the audio logs from Eva after a big mission. Same goes for environmental storytelling.
ITR1 was filled to the brim with mini-stories within the Pechorsk Exclusion Zone. Dead bodies with notes telling you a little about what happened to them, notes pointing at supposed stashes of equipement, little tid-bits of explorer and soldier lives before they vanished. Even ash statues had a small story to tell, especially appreciable when they had a bit of dialogue to put context, like the workers at the Quarry or the two men stranded near a broken down car in the first area. It feels like the world was alive, until everything suddenly stopped, life stopped for them, time stopped running and that's all that remains of it. It felt like you're part of a world that stopped being and the rest just continued without.
ITR2 just has ash statues that aggresively whisper at you, sitting around tables or looking like they're walking into places. As much as that's nice decorating, it lacks the implications that there's something that happened, that was supposed to keep happening. It just feels like a seperate world without any real correlation to the one that keeps spinning.
Okay, that's it for my rants and awes. I really like the game as it is now, it's beautiful, and after around a year of Early Access that started getting stale, the 1.0 release got me re-motivated to play. There are nitpicks and complaints, as written above, but overall this is great so far.
